Sunday, February 26, 2012

This past Friday brought us our first modest snowfall so far this winter.  What made it special visually was that the air was enough above freezing for there to be fog, and a kind of misty drizzle persisted throughout the day.  For monochrome photography, those are among the best possible conditions.

We drove out to Montgomery, NY where I was eager to visit the horse farm again with snow on the ground, and that's the image with the trees and fence.  (There are several posts below of this scene in different conditions.).  The second image was made just around the corner from the first at a town park that has a lake, benches, and this little dwarf pine. Irresistible!  Best of all, though, was that I never had to shovel a single flake, and all had melted from the driveway by the end of the day.  Yes!!





Friday, February 24, 2012

These two photographs fulfill a very long standing hope that I would one day be in this place with my camera ready, and with the light doing what it's doing here.  The row of foreground trees grow along a little brook that bisects a meadow.  The mountain behind them is still a good way off, and when passing clouds very briefly subdued light on it, I was (at last) prepared to make the photograph.  It might seem surprising, but landscape and nature photographs can be as challenging as street, or sports photographs when the success or failure of the image depends on the critical timing of a "decisive moment". 





Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I came across this odd boulder in a stream that runs beside a fairly busy rural road.  There are a number of pull-outs along the road that seem to have been cleared for fishermen who park there in droves during the 'season'.  The stream is quite rocky in a lot of places, and I walked with great difficulty on a bed of medium sized stones that brought me to this formation.  I haven't a clue to how the pool in the rock was formed except for the possibility that it was the result of a chunk that may have broken out of the larger host boulder.  I suppose eons of freeze and thaw would do that, but it's cool to see however it came to be.


Saturday, February 18, 2012

Winter here so far has been more like early spring.  Temperatures have been in the 40's to low 50's during the day, and not much lower than the mid 20's at night. I guess I'd like a beautiful light snowfall, but, in truth, I'm really happy to not have to shovel any of it at all.  Still...winter's events have their aesthetic appeal. October's surprise snowfall, and the crystaline coating of ice that usually happens at least once each year can be gorgeous.  But...it hasn't happened this winter so far, so these images are from last fall, and a prior winter that was much more severe.  On balance for me, photographs of winter's "charms" are a lot more appealing than their reality.




Sunday, February 12, 2012


I've driven past this sculpture for a couple of years,  and never stopped to take a picture of it.  But yesterday, with just a few frames left on a roll of Delta 100, I couldn't resist.  It sits on a lawn in front of Brakewell Steel Products, in Chester, NY, and is about the coolest thing Ive ever seen that a serious business has put out for public enjoyment.  The sculptor is not named, but I guess he or she is an employee of the firm.  There are a couple other sculptures there as well, but they're not where I can get near them.  Too bad, though, 'cause the work of this artist is a lot of fun!


Monday, February 6, 2012

I should probably not make this post so close in time to my previous one, but the photographs below were made yesterday, and are not old work revisited. 

It's not often that I find scenes close to home that quickly resonate as strong photographs.  What's too familiar can easily inure me to not  'see' what's there.  But, this horse farm is different, and not very close by.  It offers vivid and graphic views that make photography very appealing.  I've long wanted to include a horse, but they rarely cooperate, and patience for that is essential.  I am happy with these three 'graphs, but eventually there will be a couple more from here that I will like even better...come back from time to time and check...!!








Saturday, February 4, 2012

It's interesting to revisit negatives I made years ago.  I'm a better photographer now, but the images I made then still attract me albeit subject to revision.  The revision in this is a cropping that I've thought about for a few years.  I once bought into the notion that the entire negative was "sacred" even to the point of printing the rebate along with the image to prove the authenticity of the original vision.  I've long since abandoned that notion as being a silly kind of virtuoso artistic macho that doesn't serve artistic growth .  It was necessary when contact printing an image from a large, or ultra large negative, but certainly not when enlarging from a medium format, or 4x5 negative. 

I made the photograph below in 2001 at Watkins Glen.  I was amazed at the gorgeous gorges, and deeply impressed at the power of water to sculpt rock that during the brevity of our lives looks to be utterly impervious to erosion.